Finding a moment

Dearest one,

I have been feeling all the feelings with the festive season. It follows an intense year of shedding (Year of the snake kept its word) and I found myself waking up one morning, dreading the day ahead. A day of obligation, doing all the things, organising all the things, attending all the things and inevitably masking through it all ……

So a took a rare moment. A pause. And I dragged myself from my bed to the balcony windows. I opened the curtains, opened the window and breathed in the cold frosty air. It was like drinking in a breath of something that words cannot describe but that soothed my soul like a magical elixir of faith, hope and surrender.

And as I felt the sunlight on my face and my body began to settle, I was inspired to write a reminder to myself of the blessing that I can reach, right here, right now and in any moment. My note is shared with you now….

There is a peace that comes from still winter mornings.

The kind of peace that is unlike any other.

Where dappled sunlight peers through the wintering branches of the giant oaks, where the sound of birdsong is more tender and fleeting, where even the sight of warm air coming out a chimney top carries the song of a whispering stillness.

The soul remembering and anchoring into winters past.

It is a magical kind of thing.

And a reminder that being alive is the entire blessing.

That everything is transient but in perfect cyclical balance.

There is a magic in the air. I feel it. 

From my heart to yours, Me xx

A Winter Blessing.

My dear friend,

A winter blessing for your sweet soul. For the days that feel heavy, for the nights that are endlessly long. When you need a comforting hug in the form of tender words. This is for you. . . .

May your open heart be filled with the essence of true love and self acceptance.

May you know the power of self worth and may you shine in the light of your starlit glow.

May you always remember the light that shines within and have the courage to keep the fire lit,

Following your passion, your desire and your biggest dreams…

And mostly, may you always bask in your heart song which forever sings the melody of your soul.

With a full heart, Me xx

Surrender.

Dear Friend,

I’ve been sitting with a lingering thought and in true HSP style, sometimes processing the thoughts, feelings and emotions (because none exist without the others) is easier done on paper/keypad. So bear with me as I try to articulate this the best way that I can. Grab a cuppa, this may take a minute….

Someone recently asked me for a solution to some big things that were happening in their life and the best advice I could give was to ‘surrender’. But then she asked me “what does that even mean?!” in an exasperated voice and that really threw me. I mean how could she not know how to surrender? How could she not understand? It is my absolute go to when I don’t have a simple solution to a problem…. you just surrender.

So then, once I got past the WTF moment, I realised something. As a highly sensitive person there are an enormous amount of times when the decision to surrender is not only the best option, but the only option. When your sensory world becomes too much or feelings become too much or just the simple too muchness of situations becomes too much, sometimes you have to lean into surrender. I realised in the midst of that conversation that surrender was not something that everyone had to practice and that blew my mind. For some people, surrender was not life giving. Surrender just wasnt even a thing. For me it is everything and it’s a constant practice that is life preserving. But lets take a moment here because we are sitting in authenticity and reality, and the truth is that exploring this subject has left me feeling a little uneasy…. is that the word? I’m not sure. Maybe its the simple realisation that there are people in the world who don’t have to rely on surrendering in the hope it will take them out of fight, flight freeze. Some people just don’t get activated in the same way by their sensitivity (80% of the population according to statistics) and my brain just really struggles to compute that. Maybe uneasy isn’t the right word. I mean, I love my sensitivity in all the beauty it brings but I guess there is a very small part of me that feels frustrated that I have to work my way down and out of big feelings, and others… well, they just don’t. That in itself takes a moment. A breath and a release.

*deep breath in, deep breath out……*

Okay my friend, lets look at surrender.

It is not an act of giving up, it is an act of faith. It is choosing faith over fear.

Faith in its truest form, without any religious connotation. It is simply the absolute, unwavering belief that everything is happening in the right space and time, often for reasons we don’t know or understand yet and that everything will work out for the highest good of all concerned.

To surrender and have faith means being able to let go. Let go of controlling the outcome and settling into trust. Trust in a higher power, in God, the Universe, in whatever you believe. Trust.

Faith and Trust = Surrender.

I have had to cultivate both faith and trust even when they have been hard to come by. Listen, I’ve got through a lot of hard stuff. A LOT. And when things are hard, faith and trust can be hard to come by, but you have to dig deep, lean in, ask for guidance, ask for a sign, I pray and ask for guidance and then I meditate and open myself to receive. I accept and welcome miracles but even then at times, I get challenged and my conscious mind tries to control everything in a bid to feel safe. And in those times I remind myself that even in the worst of times, I have survived, and not just survived but always grown through the lessons I received. Even when I come out the other side, hair frazzled, emotionally spent, mind frayed at the edges and look like I have been dragged out the wreckage, I survived.

Faith and Trust. Surrender. That’s it.

Take a breath, you’ve got this friend.

Love, Me xx

The Beginning.

Dear reader,

I have been sitting with the idea of writing my first letter for some time, weeks in fact. Every time I thought about it my mind and body would go into FREEZE (my occasionally annoying conditioned go to when things get sticky). So I did what I do, I retreated into my turtle shell until it felt safe enough to feel into the feelings and ask myself why this was showing up for me. And then one night at about 2am when I was woken by my super power skill of rising to full alert at the sound of a pin drop, I received the answer. I was in freeze because if I did what I really wanted to do with these letters, if I followed my true vision, my hearts desire…. I would be vunerable and THAT was scary.

As an HSP I have always rather liked not having to share too much of my complex, private and intricate inner world, and suddenly I was asking myself to share it with the digital universe and that meant I had to lean deeply into being brave. To step out into the world with all my complexity, mask-less, with my fears and insecurities on full display and no amount of Brene Brown on repeat in my mind saying “There is no courage without vulnerability”, would move me through the big feelings that were showing up. And then one afternoon I opened a cupboard and found a box of letters. Proper licked stamp postage, old school, doodled on, scribbled with crossings outs, dramatic capital letters and squiggly hand drawn letters, and my heart opened.

I was flooded with joy and comfort, laughter and tears, re-reading these little notes from friends, old boyfriends, my penpal in Scotland and a few other random souls who had touched my heart throughout the years. I remembered the way I became giddy with excitement when I saw a letter with my name on it arrive on our boarding school hallway table. I remembered that when times were tough (and oh my goodness they got tough), one of the things that kept me going were the letters I wrote and the letters I received and it was this remembering that moved me into picking up a pen and pad at 4am to start writing this letter to you. To you, my new and already cherished friend. To you who may need a dose of connection with someone just like you, who feels the world like you.

I didn’t want to write about the usual generic ‘hints and tips for HSP’s', I was sick of the standard social media educational ‘know hows’, I was tired of the predictable instagram HSP posts, I was fed up of reading AI written blogs about what it is to be a highly sensitive human. I wanted the truth out there, all of it, in all its human glory. I wanted human connection through authenticity and truth and I knew that if I could move through the discomfort of sharing it all, I could impact the life of someone else who needed the same. And if I touched a single heart, I could make a difference in someones world.

And so heart notes was born.

Yes I will share many of the teachings I have learnt over the decades as a therapist and coach, yes, I will try to back up what I know with what I know, and lean into all the things I have learnt in my quest for deep spiritual knowledge, but my ultimate intention is to be authentic and real. And that means, it is likely to be imperfect and at times it may be messy and ugly and jeeze, it’s going to feel vulnerable. But I am all in. Because you my friend, you are my reason.

We may be living in a digital world but these letters are from my very human, highly sensitive, beating heart to yours.

And so it begins.

Love, Me x